Old insulator #1

In my misspent youth, one of the pastimes in my old hometown of Clayton, DE was to stroll the Conrail railroad tracks getting into all sorts of mischief - fishing from a railroad bridge, squishing pennies, playing guns, "hunting", and finding treasures. One of the treasures we used to find were the old glass insulators once used on telegraph and electric lines along the track. Among the more modern (i.e. post WW1) insulators such as the workhorse Whitehall Tatum #1 (found in abundnace in clear, light aqua, and dark aqua glass), we found some older gems such as the one above.

This one is a Brookfield CD 145, with some slight amber inclusions - probably from the late 1800's. There are a few minor chips in this one, which is a minor miracle since I've toted this with me for 25 years or so. One can lose themselves in the arcana of insulator collecting (just Google "glass insulators"), and there are some stunning old insulators out there in some out-of-this-world colors, but I have no interest in pursuing this as a collection. I'm going to post a couple of older models to commemrate my youth, but I'm not going to post the modern Whitehall-Tatum and similar pattern ones that decorate my shelves. These are too commonplace to be of much interest...